Solar power systems offer much promise for clean energy, with few, or zero, carbon emissions. These systems collect incident sunlight and convert this sunlight into a usable form of power, such as heat or electricity. Solar energy offers a clean, inexhaustible, sustainable solution to energy demands and has the potential to supply a very significant fraction of U.S. and global electricity consumption. While the U.S. and global solar power potential is known to be immense, solar power systems have not been economically competitive without government support, to date. Challenges remain to devise solar technologies that can lower installation costs, increase power output, and lower the marginal cost per unit energy produced, for a lower levelized cost of energy.
Emerging solar power systems include particle solar receivers that heat particles for energy conversion, energy storage, thermochemical processes, electricity production, and process heating. However, previously disclosed processes and systems are either not efficient in capturing solar energy to heat particles or require complex structures or fluidization, which increase costs and parasitic electricity consumption.
The need remains, therefore, for falling particle solar receivers and methods of falling particle heating that efficiently capture solar energy to heat particles for energy conversion, storage, and thermal processes.
Wherever possible, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawings to represent the same parts.